Death Notification

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Whenever a movie shows the folks at home while there is a war going on, you are very likely to see this: A pair of military personnel in dress uniform, approaching the home of the soldier's family. The family will almost always know what this means.

It is worth mentioning that this job is very stressful for those tasked with the duty, as they have to constantly be the Bearer of Bad News of the worst sort.

While most common in war movies, it is also a trope tragically familiar to families of firefighters and police officers as well. When the notice is (most commonly) delivered in person, it is closely related to Due to the Dead. It would be disrespectful for the deceased's loved ones to inform them of the death through the news media along with the general public, after all. Compare to He Didn't Make It. May feature a Tragic Keepsake. If the notification is laced with white lies to spare the recipient pain or avoid tainting the deceased's memory, see The Power of Legacy.

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In some cases, this takes the form of a telegram, to the point where one will immediately guess the contents of a telegram recieved by a character in a wartime setting.

Obviously, this is a Death Trope, and as such there are many spoilers. Be warned.

Big Fish has one, when the main character is sent on a suicide mission and doesn't return. We know he's alive, but his wife doesn't. Of course, the son he tells this story to assumes it's another one of his dad's tall tales. It isn't.

The police version is shown in The Dark Knight, as Lt. Gordon's partners are forced to tell his wife about his taking the bullet for the mayor. That was proven to be a plot to trap the Joker by faking Gordon's death.

In The Fighting Sullivans, a movie Based on a True Story, Lt. Robinson (Ward Bond) personally delivers to Mrs. Robinson the news that all five of her sons have been killed. In Real Life, it took three men in uniform to report the Sullivans' deaths to their parents two months after the fact.

In First Man, the heads of NASA review a press release that has been prepared in the event Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are stranded on the moon with no hope of rescue. Truth in Television, as NASA did have such a statement ready just in case the mission went wrong.

In The Human Comedy, Homer is a telegraph messenger boy in World War II, which means that he sometimes has to deliver death notification telegrams from the War Department. It's a downer, and it's even more of a downer when he has to read the telegram to a Hispanic mother who can't read English.

A League of Their Own: One of the girls gets a telegram telling her that her husband was killed in action. The man delivering the telegram somehow didn't realize that he never bothered to find out which woman on the team was supposed to receive the letter, causing much dread on the teams part. When he says he has to go back to the office and check, Jimmy takes the telegram and throws him out of the clubhouse.

The 2009 movie The Messenger focuses on the men who deliver the notices.

In Nanny McPhee Returns, there's one of these, but it's delivered by telegram rather than the two representatives. It later proves to be a forgery.

Saving Private Ryan has a montage early on as Mrs. Ryan receives a series of death notices for all but one of her sons, preceded by a scene showing a typing pool of a few dozen women producing those notices by the thousands.

Sort of in Since You Went Away. Anne receives the standard telegram, but it says that her husband Tim is missing in action, and later the Happy Ending has them find out that he's alive. The later telegram informing the family that Jane's fiance Bill was killed in Italy arrives offscreen, with Anne telling Jane after Jane comes home.

Early in Star Trek Beyond, two Vulcans meet Spock at Starbase Yorktown to tell him that Ambassador Spock has died.

In Swing Kids (about teenagers in Hitler's Germany) one of the kids is forced into the Hitler Youth, and is assigned to deliver some small boxes to various people, all of whom scream after he leaves. He decides to open one and discovers a wedding ring and some ash - he'd been delivering the remains of people who had been executed and cremated.

Taking Chance: The very beginning of the film does this from the point of view of the military personnel delivering the notice.

During one of the dogfights in Top Gun, Goose cracks a joke about this after Jester "kills" them.

Goose: The Defense Department regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid.

Subverted, the notices are delivered by a taxi cab driver, implied to be an army veteran himself who really isn't enjoying the experience. Julia Moore and Barbara Geoghegan take it upon themselves to deliver the letters themselves, both to save the taxi driver from some of the anguish and out of a sense of responsibility to their neighbors.

Subverted again in the film's climax, when a car with two men in uniform stop in front of Julia's house...and one of them is Hal Moore, home from the war.

In Yamato, Kamio has to bring the news of Nishi's death to his mother.

The Australian film The Telegram Man (2018) has the title character delivering telegrams to isolated Outback farms, a job that makes him quite popular as the bearer of news from the outside world...until World War 2 breaks out.

Jokes

A man gets a knock at the door, and it's a guy with a telegram. The man asks the delivery guy to sing it — he's never had a singing telegram before. The guy says he doesn't think he can. The man offers $100 to get the telegram in song. This convinces the guy. He clears his throat, reads the telegram and sings "Your sister, Rose, is dead!"

Literature

Discworld: Nobby Nobbs of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is no longer allowed to deliver these after "that bet-you-a-dollar-you're-the-widow-Jackson nonsense." Carrot or Vimes usually handles it. (This is based on an urban legend that's probably as old as this trope.)

Star Trek Novel Verse: Apparently Starfleet has a Casualty Notification Office to inform family members when someone is killed in the line of duty. Captain Kirk, though, still feels it appropriate that he should also send a personal letter when one of his crew dies.

In Wraith Squadron, Wedge Antilles is shown to be writing out the notification for the death of Jesmin Ackbar, to be delivered to her uncle, a well-known admiral. It takes him most of the night to finish it...but with the task done, at least he's able to sleep for that last hour. The admiral later thanks Wedge for the kind words regarding the pilot.

Subverted in the second Wraith Squadron novel, in which Ton Phanan dies and, when Face offers to help Wedge write the notification, he finds he's the one who'd be receiving it, since Phanan's closest relatives are distant cousins who've never met him.

In A Song of Ice and Fire novel A Dance with Dragons, Ramsay Bolton sends the Night Watch a false message stating Stannis Baratheon is dead to demoralize Stannis's forces. But did Ramsay send it, or did someone else...

In the Harry Bosch series, this is a frequent occurrence due to Harry's job as a homicide detective. Harry notes that, despite the hundreds of times that he has done it, it never gets easier and he's never sure that he's doing it right. He also remarks to a new partner that the difficulty of notifying the victim's family is also affected by the fact that they often need to be considered in the pool of suspects until proven otherwise.

By The Sword: After one battle, there's a scene where Kerowyn is going down the list of dead Sunbolts and marking the (few) names she needs to "write the letter" for.

The 1952 What's It Like Out There by Edmond Hamilton was a deconstruction of the heroic Space Opera he helped create. The Sole Survivor of a Mars expedition goes around to the families of his crew but ends up whitewashing the truth about how they died.

Subverted in Roald Dahl's autobiographical Going Solo, in which his mother received a telegram while he was serving in World War II and initially thought it was this, but didn't open it until one of her daughters came to be with her. When they actually read it, they found the telegram was not a death notice, but "Regret to advise you, your son wounded and in hospital in Alexandria." The relief was palpable.

After the death of Nathan West's younger brother Neil, Nathan is shocked to discover that the notification letter was sent to the wrong address. He ends up writing a letter of his own home to inform his mother himself. It is implied that rather than being hand-delivered, the notices are sent in the mail in "ugly yellow envelopes".

This is seen again in the episode "Never No More": After someone's fighter gets locked with an enemy Ace Custom and is sent spiraling into a planet, it is stated in the debriefing that the enemy ace survived. When asked about the friendly pilot, the CO drops a yellow envelope on the table.

Sarah Jane Smith gets one of these visits from a UNIT colonel, accompanied by an entourage of armored trucks and gun-toting grunts (seriously, did they think Sarah Jane was going to eat them or something?), in The Sarah Jane Adventures episode "The Death of the Doctor". She doesn't believe it for a minute.

Variations on this trope turn up from time to time in M*A*S*H, although we don't usually get to see the news delivered.

One episode has Radar writing a heartwrenching letter for Colonel Potter to send to a deceased ambulance driver's folks. Made worse because before he knew the man was dead Potter was going to berate him for injuring patients with his careless driving.

When Hawkeye is declared Legally Dead by the army, his father is notified by telegram. Because of other machinations, like his mail being stopped and a visiting politician, he couldn't even contact his father to tell him the mistake.

The episode "Abyssinia Henry" ends with Radar coming into the O.R. to deliver some bad news.

The Star Trek: Enterprise episode "The Forgotten" has Trip being asked to write one for an engineer who died in The Expanse. Trip can't bring himself to do it at first, because every time he starts the letter ends up describing his dead sister Elizabeth.

In the pilot episode for Defiance, the McCawly family gets one of these after Luke is murdered.

On ER, after Gallant has been killed in Iraq, two military police show up at the hospital, looking for his wife, Neela. The minute he lays eyes on them, it's obvious that the desk clerk, a veteran himself, knows what they're going to tell her.

In Game of Thrones, ravens are usually used to send messages throughout the Westeros, and people have said to them "dark wings, dark words" which includes the death of nobles. Winterfell receives a raven informing Ned Starks execution, and everyone in Westeros receives word of King Joffrey's death..

The Dream Sequence/Imagine Spot in the 200th episode ("Life Before His Eyes") of NCIS has Gibbs pose the question "What would have happened if my wife and daughter had not been killed?" The ghost of Mike Franks shows him — Shannon and Kelly waiting for Gibbs to return home until a cadre of marines appears at their front door...

Discussed in the episode "Twenty Klicks" between Vance and Ducky when the chopper carrying Gibbs, McGee, IT Kevin, and three Red Shirts is shot down.

Vance: Family notifications are your wheelhouse, Doctor. Would you mind? Ducky: My kingdom for a smaller wheelhouse.

"Blood Brothers" starts with a mother being told that her daughter was killed in action—after she's already lost one son and has another who's dying of leukemia.

In Law & Order: UK Matt Devlin shows up at the house of a fellow police officer and friend to tell his wife that they've found his dead body. She initially thinks he's just there casually. But then she sees his face and breaks down, refusing to let him actually say the words.

ANZAC Girls: Grace Wilson, an Australian Army nurse (specifically, a Matron, aka in charge of the whole hospital's nursing staff) serving on the front lines of World War I, receives a telegram of this sort and her hands start shaking before she even opens it — her brother has been killed. Reading it only confirms her worst suspicions. Unfortunately, she has a whole convoy of wounded soldiers to treat, and so she soldiers onwithout betraying her feelings any further until she's safely in her tent and can break down sobbing.

General Hospital. After one of mobster Sonny Corinthos' bodyguards is killed, he and right-hand man Jason go to inform the man's widow.

The Commish. Two police officers spend the entire day stalling over one of these. When they finally work up the nerve There Was Much Rejoicing from the family of the dear departed, who wasn't well liked.

The Bill. The officers go to inform a man his brother is dead and are surprised when he legs it out the back door instead. Turns out he's involved in criminal activity and assumed they were coming to arrest him.

Foyle's War. A telegraph boy has run away from his job after being attacked and abused by a woman he brought a death notice to. A Jewish psychiatrist counsels him that it was Nothing Personal, just her lashing out at the Bearer of Bad News. Feeling good after having helped the boy, the psychiatrist decides to go to the cinema...just in time to catch a newsreel about the recently liberated concentration camps. Fleeing from the cinema, he ends up murdering an escaped German prisoner he encounters.

Music

The ending of "Sullivan" by Caroline's Spine:

''It's not hard to reach back to the day When the war finally came home Uncle Sam will send you a telegram So he doesn't have to tell you over the phone I heard she cracked up When she found out what the war had cost And all five of her boys were lost... [...]

Say goodbye, bye, bye Mrs. Sullivan Go ahead and cry, cry, cry, cry, cry We regret to inform you that all of your sons have passed away All five, five, five, five So change your blue star to gold''

Video Games

Dragon Age: Origins has a Side Quest that involves delivering death notifications to widows. Actually Played for Laughs if you ask one of your more flippant teammates do it for you, resulting in quotes like Morrigan's "Your man has died. Get over it." or Oghren's "Good news lady! You're single!"

In Valkyria Chronicles IIIE2, Not only Kurt must bring the newsnote The task can't be delegated to anyone else, as his squad is a penal legion that's not officially recorded in the military of Gusurg's death to the dead guy's big sister, but he must also explain that Gusurg died as a traitor to Gallia, having chosen to defect to the invading Empire's Calamity Raven for the sake of a chance for his ostracized people to found their own country. And that Kurt killed Gusurg by his own hands. The big sister face the news solemnly, stating that Gusurg died for what he believed. This is the last straw for Kurt's psyche, and Riela and Imca must talk him to his senses. Yeah, it's that kind of story.

In Mass Effect 3, Shepard can deliver a death notification to an asari on the Citadel whose krogan husband died fighting the Reapers. Only if you helped the two of them get together in the previous game, though. It's fairly sad.

In a late-game sidequest in Borderlands 2, the player has to do this for the NPCs in Sanctuary after the death of Roland. It's actually one of the few moments in-game that's not played for laughs.

Exo Squad: According to one of the post-episode "Character card" segments the show featured, Avery Butler personally records a message for the family of every Jumptrooper who dies under his command. Given that the homeworlds are occupied, he can't deliver these messages. He still records them.

In The Simpsons, a former street punk turned soldier named Armin Tamzarian delivers one of these to the mother of his MIA superior officer, Seymour Skinner, in a flashback. It's then subverted when he can't bring himself to tell her and pretends to be her son; he is the man now known as Principal Skinner. Also an example of artistic license, since in the American military, the men who give the notification are traditionally at the same rank as the deceased or higher.

In ThunderCats (2011) Prodigal general Grune, arriving home from a years-long search for an Ancient Artifact, delivers word of his comrade Panthro's loss to mutual friend King Claudus while handing over one of the former's nunchucks. The details are suspiciously vague, not to spare Claudus emotionally, but to hide Grune's betrayal and defection to Big Bad Mumm-Ra until their invasion forces are marshalled.

One shows up in an episode of Pingu, of all places. We aren't told the details, obviously, but during "Pingu Delivers the Mail", Pingu and his father deliver a black-edged envelope to one of their customers — who starts crying.

The Futurama episode "The Honking" begins with Bender getting a letter about his uncle Vladimir dying. The team attend the will reading, which sets off the rest of the plot.

Hermes: and for Bender... Uh, oh! A black-bordered envelope. Amy: Oh, no! Someone you know must have died. Bender: I hope it was one of my enemies. Those guys suck.

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